A new way to think about cancer

The more I dig into cancer, the more I struggle with traditional approaches that focus on tumors or cancerous cells rather than the overall environment that has allowed cancer to thrive in the first place.

In my work with organizational challenges, I know that removing a single problem employee will do little to improve dynamics if the environment, i.e. the culture, is less than optimal. The same thing applies to cancer. If you don't change the environment, you'll likely end up with the same problem again down the road.

I am a living breathing example of that. 2001, lop off the breasts where the cancer resided and call it good. 12 years later, we face the challenge again. The breast cancer cells found their way into my spine, sacrum, ribs and hips.

Research suggests that cancer arises only when cancer cells find fertile terrain in which to grow. Put another way, cancer cells only flourish in an individual whose immune defenses have been weakened. This notion opens up an entirely way of thinking about cancer.

As David Servan-Schreiber notes in Anticancer, "the aim of such new approaches would be not to eradicate tumors by targeting cancer cells themselves, but to "stabilize" these tumors over very long periods by strengthening and mobilizing our natural defenses."

Tumors are symptoms of a diseased organism

Josef Issels, in Cancer, A Second Opinion, notes:

The whole problem of cancer, in terms of growth, in terms of control, in terms of prolonged remission, turns on the bedrock that the disease is one of the organization as a whole. The tumor is a symptom, albeit an important one. This means that malignant tumors can only develop in a diseased organism.

These are not new ideas. In fact, the question is, where and when did we begin to focus locally rather than considering the body as a whole? Early physicians seemed to know better and treat people accordingly. Hippocrates' (460-377 B.C.) work contains numerous references to the causes ("black bile" - i.e. toxins) and treatment (detoxification) of cancer. In the Middle Ages, we find similar references to black bile, as well as "fermenting substance" and "acridity" as causes.

Arabian and pre-Renaissance medicine were also focused on detoxification with specific references to plant pharmacotherapy. The physician Parcelsus (1493-1541) believed, "it is not the physician who heals, but nature" and saw the key to cancer as reinforcement of the body's own defenses. Among the plant remedies he used were hellebore, which has medicinal actions similar to those of mistletoe, sedum, arnica and also garlic, onion and leeks (still high in our anti-cancer food list).

Parcelsus was also an alchemist and used zinc, arsenic, sulphur and various mixtures of salts. In this regard, he is sometimes referred to as the father of chemotherapy. Parcelsus approach to treating cancer also included a mind-body component. He used a form of psychotherapy, because he felt

The causes of every disease are to be found in the soul and spirit as well as in the body.

This systemic view of cancer remained in play for a thousand or more years. Generation after generation of physicians believed that cancer arose through a complex disorder of metabolism and the body's inability to eliminate toxins.

The focus began to change in the mid nineteenth century after cellular pathology gained favor and cancer become the province of surgeons. The nineteenth century saw great advances in surgery, culminating in today's sophisticated surgical and anesthetic techniques, resuscitation and post-operative care, which combined to make surgery relatively safe.

With the prominence of surgery and therefore surgeons, the localized view of cancer replaced the systemic view. Surgeons believed they could remove the disease by removing the tumor.  This view has remained steadfast since that time, and now is often accompanied by chemotherapy and radiation.

Next time I'll take a look at modern medicine's approach to cancer, and in particular chemo and radiation. But I won't spend a lot of time there, because frankly, any treatment that tears down the very thing (i.e. the immune system) that we need to beat cancer, just doesn't make sense. I'd rather spend my time focusing on cleaning up the environment, my internal environment, that is.